Nov. 9, 2004
Gretchen Cook-Anderson
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-0836)
Rob Gutro
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-4044)
RELEASE: 04-368
NASA CLIMATOLOGISTS NAMED IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN TOP 50 SCIENTISTS
For the first time NASA researchers have been awarded the Scientific
American Top 50 Scientist Award. Climatologists Dr. Drew Shindell and
Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
(GISS), New York, received the award given by Scientific American
Magazine.
The Scientific American 50 is a prestigious annual list, published in
the December edition, recognizing outstanding acts of leadership in
science and technology from the past year. Shindell and Schmidt were
named Research Leaders in the Environmental Studies for seeking clues
in the global warming category.
The scientists were selected by the magazine's Board of Editors with
the help of distinguished outside advisors. The list also recognizes
research, business and policy leaders in various technological
categories including Agriculture, Chemicals and Materials, Climate,
Communications, Computing, Energy, Environment, and Medical
Treatments.
Shindell is an atmospheric physicist who investigates climate change
and atmospheric chemistry at GISS. He is also a lecturer in the
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia
University. He received a bachelor's degree in physics from the
University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in physics from
State University of New York at Stony Brook. After several years of
field research in the Arctic and Antarctic, he received the National
Science Foundation's Antarctic Service Medal in 1994.
Shindell has authored more than 50 papers during the past decade. He
has participated in numerous international assessments and public
outreach activities, including consulting for the American Museum of
Natural History.
Schmidt is a computer climate modeler who works on developing
large-scale models of the atmosphere-ocean climate system. He has
worked on understanding climate variability in the past, going back
as far as 55 million years and forward to possible future climates.
Schmidt received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oxford
University in England and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from
University College London. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at
McGill University, Montreal until 1996. In 1996 he was awarded a
Climate and Global Change Fellowship by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, which marked the start of his work at
GISS.
Schmidt has more than 30 papers in scientific literature. He is
involved in public outreach, most recently at the College de France
in Paris, and among high school students in New York, two of which he
mentored to the finals of the Intel International Science
competition.
To learn more about NASA's climate change research on the Internet,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment
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